Pakistan Taleban take over towns as they move closer to Islamabad

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The Taleban seized towns less than 65 miles from Pakistan’s capital yesterday, renewing fears that Islamabad’s recent peace deal with the radicals would only accelerate their advance across the country.

The peace accord had already drawn harsh criticism from Pakistan’s Western allies. “I think that the Pakistani Government is basically abdicating to the Taleban and to the extremists,” Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of States, said yesterday. She added that the situation in Pakistan “poses a mortal threat to the security of our country and the world”.

Mrs Clinton gave her gloomy assessment to the US Congress shortly after hundreds